In the Rare Book and Manuscript
Library at Yale University is a beautiful 200-page medieval known as
the Voynich Manuscript. It's full of detailed drawings and paintings
of unknown plants and flowers that to our knowledge never existed. The
beautiful script is written in an unknown language and has defied all
attempts to decipher it.

This strange book is named after the New York book dealer who bought
it in 1912 from a Jesuit library in Italy. With the book was a letter
written by a famous Jesuit scholar dated 1666 which claimed the author
was Roger Bacon, the English scientist from the 13th century.
After buying the manuscript, Voynich made copies available to all
who wanted to try to break the code, including teams of wartime cypher
aces. When Voynich's widow died, the manuscript was sold to a book
dealer who had no luck at all marketing it, and so donated it to Yale
University. The speculations as to what it could be ranged from an
attempt to create an artificial language to an example of spirit-driven-automatic
writing to an early "Sci-Fi" attempt at creating an alternative
world's Earthly literary offering.

The only person to have any luck finding out what the book says is
Professor Robert Brumbaugh of Yale, who considers it an alchemical
work. Some calculations scribbled in the margins of the book led him
to create a code that helped decipher some of the names of the plants
that do exist - and stars we know the names of. The rest of it remains
a mystery.

It's too bad the manuscript isn't reprinted for the public - with
today's computers and puzzle-freaks maybe someone could crack this
puppy?